The present invention concerns apparatus for collecting cartridge casings and more particularly concerns a device for collecting casings from spent shells or cartridges as they are ejected from a firearm, such as an M-16 rifle.
During firearm practice and particularly during the tactical training period of military personnel, one of the more important training exercises is that of shooting at targets. In order to develop and maintain proficiency in firearm use, such target practice is normally undertaken on a repetitive basis with a resulting large expenditure in the number of cartridges used.
Spent cartridges ejected from a firearm are usually free to drop onto the ground to be collected later, or abandoned. Since one of the major costs in a cartridge is the cost of the brass cartridge casing itself, and since such spent casings are quite often abandoned, the cost of target practice has become increasingly more expensive. Although to police for such empty casings is time consuming, to abandon them creates the potential danger of injury to military personnel tripping over the casings, and damage to vehicle tires from lost casings which become embedded in roadways. In the absence of any device for catching spent cartridges as they are ejected from a firearm, they are able to strike and injure nearby marksmen, thus presenting an additional personnel hazzard.
Although a number of cartridge catching devices have been developed in the past, they suffer from one or more deficiencies which limit their effectiveness. Many, for example, are not affixed to the firearm in a manner to permit the shooter to "hit the dirt" during training exercises without fear of damaging the device upon contact with the ground. Others are shaped such as to enable the ejected shells to rebound towards the ejection chamber and jam in it, especially in the case of the longer cartridges used with blank ammunition. None are constructed to permit an easy and safe visual inspection of the ejection port of the firearm without removal of the device from the firearm. Many do not fully enclose the firearm ejection port while others do not provide means to periodically empty the cartridge collection bag without removal of the entire device from the firearm. Other prior art devices obstruct the proper operation of the firearm by a left-handed marksman.